"The cattle tick is a small, flat-bodied, blood-sucking insect with a curious life history. It emerges from the egg not yet fully developed, lacking a pair of legs and sexual organs...The metabolism of the insect is sluggish to the point of being suspended entirely. The sperm she received in the act of mating remains bundled into capsules where it, too, waits in suspension until mammalian blood reaches the stomach of the tick, at which time the capsules break, the sperm ae released and they fertilize the eggs which have been reposing in the ovary, also waiting in a kind of time suspension. The signal...is the scent of butyric acid, a substance present in the sweat of all mammals. This is the only experience that will trigger time into existence for the tick...
The tick represents...a kind of apotheosis of subjective time perception. For a period as long as eighteen years nothing happens. The period passes as a single moment..."
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